Excerpt:
More than 218,000 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in October -- a monthly record and more than during the whole of 2014, the United Nations said Monday.
"Last month was a record month for arrivals," UN refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told AFP, pointing out that "arrivals in October parallelled the entire 2014."
In October, 218,394 people made the perilous crossing -- all but 8,000 of them landing in Greece -- compared to 216,054 Mediterranean arrivals during all of last year, UN figures show.